Battle Tanks 

Finally, we’ve made it!
MacOS X 10.4/5 universal build.

Recently we’ve discovered terrible bug in multiplayer code preventing users from connecting to the server. :(

We’ve re-uploaded 0.8.7686, and uploaded two micro patches. Update1+2 for is the vanilla 0.8.7656 and update2 for the updated to 0.8.7667 installations. Sorry for inconvenience.

Yet another bicycle was born today! I’ve started another compact patching system about a week ago. So, the first patch is out: 0.8-update1. It updates battle tanks from version 0.8.7656 to 0.8.7667. It’s only 900k! It fixes HRTF noise, updates french translation and adds capitalization for auto-generated nicks. Download it now and help us improving our nice game! Windows only.

At last! What Bolsheviks were dreaming about for so long now comes true: after a whole month of work we present a final Battle Tanks 0.8.7656. And even for Mac users! Thanks to all for your bug reports, and please send more!

The full changelog is more than 100 lines long, so we will only mention news after 0.8-RC1.

General:

• The engine is ported to MacOS X 10.5 Leopard. We also think about a port for 10.4 Tiger.
• For linuxoids, an “install” target is added for scons.
• A new Ukrainian localization is added, as well as new diacritic marks for the Cyrillic codepage.
• Thanks to a better algorithm of counting the delays (based on bar chart of errors) and a new method of serialization of floats, the quality of life network game became better.
• A DNS cache is added to eliminate delays on scanning the servers.

Interface:

• Servers in the connection dialog are now colored: live servers are green and dead ones are white. We have also added a progress indicator for the scanning process.
• Buttons are now highlighted on mouse hover. Easy but looks great!
• System messages are now displayed using user’s language, not server’s.
• System icons are re-drawn for WinXP, Vista, and Mac.

Gameplay:

• Damage is increased for tank ammo.
• Shilka now unloads its cargo when it is killed. So if there were troopers or nuclear mines inside–they drop for everyone’s joy and surprise :-) .

Fixes:

• An incorrect work of UDP on BSD systems is corrected.
• Hanging on scanning servers is eliminated.
• Crash on machines that don’t have a sound card is fixed.
• A wrong number of channels in ogg stream is now right.
• Problems with broadcasting UDP are no longer problems.
• A bug is fixed that allowed some objects to be immortal. (Everyone should have seen a non-destructible spaceport on cooperative maps.)
• A swarm of small but nasty errors is fixed.

Warning! The Internet game server is also updated, so please don’t try connecting to it using an old client.

Just a few minutes ago I finished MacOSX port of Battle Tanks. Proofpic:

We got Solar Eclipse right now here in Russia, Novosibirsk.

Our game now have Ukrainian localization. Thanks to Vadim Nehay.

This localization will be included to the final release 0.8.xxxx. Now it can be found in SVN.

By the way, we are wanna appeal to those who have translate our game to their languages. There are a lot of new phrases that need to be translated. We would appreciate if you renew your localization.

Five months and 1679 commits passed since build 0.7.5800 has been published. Finally we decided that we should no longer wait for release, and we must publish it ASAP. But the code is not yet free of bugs, and we present an intermediate build 0.8-RC1. It has so many new features that our small team needs your help in testing it.

Here is a brief list of innovations:

Muliplayer

• Ability to play in teams. Two new modes: Team DeathMatch and Capture the Flag.
• World-wide-internet-network game. We have established three servers that are available across the planet; each one serves one type of network game (CTF, TDM and good old Cooperative). Currently, the servers are in test mode, but everybody may connect: just click Scan button in Join the Game menu and find btanks.media.netive.ru in a list.
• Enthusiasts may set up their own standalone servers.

Video and Audio

• Thanks to our D3dSDL library, BTanks for Microsoft® Windows™ now use DirectX™® and not OpenGL™. This has really increased the overall performance.
• Screen resolutions are now taken from SDL.
• We no longer support OpenAL because we have our own Clunk library now.
• Some new sounds are added.

Controls and Gameplay

• The effect of slowing/speeding-up is eliminated.
• Diagonal shooting is improved (yeah we did that!).
• Shilka looked a bit boring, so we have improved its turret: now it rotates and self-aims.
• Grenades and mortair missiles now fly over obstacles.
• Frags are counted better; a telefrag trick is added (if two people enter the same teleport, only the last one survives).
• Join/leave/death messages are sent to chat automatically. Messages from players are coloured according to colors of teams.

Maps

• A new ‘Four Rooms’ map is added for CTF anf TDM.
• The map editor is now shipped with the game. It is still user-unfriendly. We are not sorry.
• Timers and OBEY effect are added to scripts to help controlling objects with LUA. Now scripting is much more powerful!

Code
An incremental network protocol, a new serialization model, compression with dictionary made it possible to decrease network traffic in times! All code is ported to g++ 4.3. All game resources are packed into a single resources.dat file (DEB, RPM and other ebuilds builders must be happy). sigc++ is no longer used because we now have our own library. Random number generator is improved.

Phew… These are only the most important things, so if you want to find out more–see the changelog. And we look forward to your bugreports!

P.S. Oh, dear Mac users, you will unfortunately have to wait for the new build. But we do remember you!

You could listen it online or download all files here.

What's your favourite tune?

• Batterie
• GameBoy
• Karbofos
• Nostalgy
• Utrennik
• Quadris (bonus)
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By the way, we’re assembling stand-alone server for the internet game. Stay tuned. There’s a chance releasing battle tanks within week.

Uranium mines affected us: there was no release for four months. But we struggle as real heroes and patriots. We’re preparing another «most featured» release powered by arm uranium.

We added the team modes to our neat arcade, even Capture The Flag! These modes are playable on each deathmatch map. 95% of code have been finished, just a few more testing is remaining. And as always there is a brand new map!

Linux geeks could grab code from svn right now (beware of bugs!).